I mean, for instance, this Barcelona event is live on TV in Barcelona, right? So if we can get someone in Barcelona to point a camera on that freaking TV and stream it live worldwide, we can all watch it on our computers, right? All we need is approval from ATP or Barcelona clowns? Who?

The only reason TV networks hate this is because this would take away from forcing people to watch their telecast to justify the ratings blah blah. But if there IS no freaking coverage in other countries, is anybody really getting hurt?

“Typical,” went the reaction to Nikolay Davydenko and Novak Djokovic’s recent retirements against Roger Federer. But were they? We took the raw data and used it to draw some rough conclusions.

Roger Federer’s aura of invincibility may have been fading fast, but over the past week and a half he’s quite literally recovered some of it by default. Three times he’s faced his nearest challengers in the rankings, and twice they’ve handed him victory.

First came Nikolay Davydenko, who quit with a leg injury in the Estoril final. He had lost the first set in a tiebreak and was up a break in the second set. Then in Monte Carlo last week, Novak Djokovic stopped after going down a set and a break to Federer in the semifinals.

The retirements attracted particular attention for two reasons. One was timing: neither involved a mid-match injury that made carrying on impossible. Davydenko still looked competitive in the match, while Djokovic was just a few games away from losing and seemed capable of playing till the end.

The other was the players involved. Both Davydenko and Djokovic have acquired a reputation for dubious defaults in precisely such situations.
“I have a little injury and I can’t finish the match,” Davydenko told the Estoril crowd, later assuring reporters that he would be ready to play at Monte Carlo in three days’ time.

Djokovic, who received a few boos from the crowd as he left the court on Saturday, made his problem sound even more tepid. “It’s a sore throat. I feel dizziness a little bit in the last three days,” he said afterwards. “I asked the doctor yesterday but he said I don’t have nothing, which I really don’t believe. I think he didn’t give me the right diagnosis, obviously.

“But obviously when you’re playing against the No. 1 player of the world, you get a lot of balls back and longer points, and I just couldn’t get enough energy back after each point… the previous opponents were not that tough and I didn’t have long rallies against the previous opponents like I had today.”

So were their actions typical? Yes and no. They’ve done it before, but it’s hardly something they do all the time. They just do it a little more often than most, and a little more dramatically to boot.

The numbers show that Djokovic tends to retire more often than any other top-10 player, but just as significant is the fact that he chooses memorable occasions to do so. Three of his five retirements have come against either Federer or Nadal in the semifinals of big events. Those are also the only times he’s retired facing a big deficit in a match, suggesting he doesn’t want to give his biggest rivals a clean win when he’s unfit.

Most notorious is Djokovic’s French Open meeting with Nadal two years ago, when he pulled the plug after losing the first two sets but declared he felt he had been “in control” of the match. His retirement against the Spaniard at rain-hit Wimbledon last year was more understandable, given that he had played nine hours in the previous two days to defeat Lleyton Hewitt in four sets and Marcos Baghdatis in five. His other two retirements were attributed to the breathing difficulties that plagued him early on and were eventually fixed with corrective surgery.

At other times, however, Djokovic has shown he’s willing to fight through physical problems, starting with a cult match against Gael Monfils at the 2005 US Open when he huffed and puffed his way to victory in five dramatic sets. A gasping Djokovic called numerous injury timeouts during the match, including one during the late stages that delayed Monfils’ service game. Monfils later admitted he had gone cold during the break.

That match also established another damaging perception that clings to the Serb – a habit of calling the trainer during tough contests. “I think he’s a joke, you know, when it comes down to his injuries. The rules are there to be used, not abused,” said Federer after a Davis Cup match in 2006.

Along with James Blake, Federer is the only member of the top ten never to have retired during a match.

Richard Gasquet comes out second on both lists, which only adds to the hits he’s taken for showing a lack of toughness. Accusing of ducking a Davis Cup match with Andy Roddick a couple of weeks ago, he could instead do with the kind of performance he produced against Roddick at Wimbledon last year, coming from two sets and a break down to win their quarterfinal match.

Davydenko stands out for the sheer number of times he’s abandoned a contest, but his marathon schedule means he also plays (and loses) the most matches. He owns the most infamous retirement in men’s tennis, a 6-2, 3-6, 1-2 defeat in the second round of Sopot that made headlines when betting exchange Betfair voided all wagers on the match because of strange betting patterns. Happily for his sporting reputation but intriguingly for match-fixing theorists, a number of Davydenko’s main draw retirements have come when he was even or leading in the match.

Clearly something had to give when Djokovic and Davydenko met in a Davis Cup match earlier this month. And so it proved: Djokovic retired up two sets to one at 4-6, 3-6, 6-4, 0-0.

But while they’re high on the list of top-ten players, both fall short of some perennial offenders like Tommy Haas and Juan Martin del Potro, who have repeated retired a game or two away from losing a match. It’s tough to condemn either one too heartily given how many injuries they’ve had to content with, but still, reaching the finish line is clearly not one of their priorities.

Haas takes the cake for once retiring down 6-4, 5-0 to Andrei Pavel in Montreal because of a back injury which flared up during the first set. But it’s just as tricky not to start a match as it is to not finish it: he’s also taken flak for giving Federer walkovers in their past two meetings.

In del Potro’s case, a staggering one-fifth of his 40 career defeats have been unfinished matches, including perhaps the second-most famous retirement in men’s tennis – a 6-1, 3-1 loss to James Blake whose side-effects ended ATP’s experiment with round-robin events. The Argentine was earmarked as a future top-ten player before his physical frailties became obvious – if he ever does get there, he may end up making Djokovic look indefatigable.

If you are a 20-year old and your parents are publicly ridiculed by none other than your biggest rival on the tour, it’s more than challenging your manhood. I think this was the classic ‘gloves are coming off’ moment for the two of them.

Federer may not have meant it to be that way and heat of the moment probably swayed him to spontaneously say what he did “Keep quiet, OK’, but based on what we have seen of Djokovic and his family this will be taken very seriously, initiating a response both on and off the court that may not be pretty.

You think Djokovic will look for even the slightest of opportunity to shout back at Federer’s parents? You bet!!!!! You can take insult to yourself, but anything directed at your parents is crossing the line. Sampras was furious when it spilled over to his wife. She was being blamed for the decline in Sampras’s game in the last two years. That was big part of the reason Sampras wanted to win another Grand Slam and shut these people up.

If you have ever been in a situation like this, you will instantly know how infuriating it can be. And if you are young and restless and in your early twenties, it further exacerbates the degree of pain and humiliation.

Each of us have an extra gear, no matter at what level we are operating on currently. Of course, you all have a few more than that, considering how active you are. Remember Sampras operating at a level that got him to No. 6 in the world and he felt rather comfortable there? He stayed with that pace for a while and may have remained there forever if not for that 1992 US Open finals against Edberg which he lost in four sets.

Sampras confessed that to be a turning point in his career and the rest is like they say history. The turning point in the life of successful people usually come when they face a calamity or go through extremely trying times. That’s the time they are introduced to their real self and discover abilities and talents that lay dormant all those years.

Is this one of those times for Djokovic? Will this be enough for him to work even harder to get even on the court? Like they say, it’s not how good we are, it’s how bad we want it that determines our final destination. Will the motivation to avenge his parents humiliation trump his desire to be No. 1, to dethrone Federer from his perch?

This has to be the first time in the history of the sport that a player has publicly asked opponent’s parents to zip it. Based on the previous infractions from Djokovic’s parents it does not seem too surprising. Nevertheless it does not have a precedent.

Will this turn into an open war between the two players upstaging even McEnroe-Connors bickerings? That should add another interesting twist to the saga, don’t you think? Now, if we can somehow get both moms on Jerry Springer show, tennis will once again become a mainstream sport.

Someone sent an online tennis game that made me very unproductive for about a week… now I found another one which has made me even MORE unproductive at work — if that’s even possible! jaja… and that’s because this one is soooo much better… you can actually control the pace and the angles and all… it’s awesome!!